Provide Skills for Indonesian Unemployed Youth

When the pandemic hit Indonesia and schools were asked to close, our Vocational Training Centre found itself also closing all our doors and stopping all our English, Computer and Sewing classes. In the beginning, we continued keeping in touch with our students via Whatsapp but we knew we had to do something to keep our students’ motivation to learn alive. The English class was the only class that could be run online as it did not require any equipment such as computers and sewing machines.

We did a variety of different digital activities. The first one was online learning with English teachers and students from Bina Nusantara University, followed by videos of lessons created by our English tutors and shared through a WhatsApp group. The videos explained the lessons based on the module that each student had received. At the end of the video, there was an assignment. 

As much as we tried to make these lessons interesting and fun for the students, many of them had difficulties keeping up with the online classes. Students were juggling learning alone at home and plenty of school assignments as a result of school closure. We highly appreciate all the efforts of our tutors who, despite all of the difficulties, managed to motivate their students to participate in these online classes, submit their assignments, attend the English Online Class with Bina Nusantara University (Binus), and complete the final exam. We kept the sessions and the lessons quite simple for this batch because we did not want to burden our students with more work. 

At the end of the course, we granted all our students a Certificate of Participation. The certificates were given to the students as an appreciation of their commitment to complete the chosen session from the modules even though they were unable to fully attend all their classes. In the future, we will continue to find innovative ideas for learning for the English class as well as other classes too. Hopefully, in the near future, we can apply for permission to run small group classes face-to-face to help the students to catch up on their lessons. 

It’s not only in CIpanas that we try to be innovative and find ways for students in rural areas to keep learning. Check out a video of the activities of our library in Kalimantan " YUM Community Library in Kalimantan  "- we hope through this video that you will be able to transport yourself to Central Kalimantan!

On another note, we had the honor to be interviewed by GlobalGiving for their recent article called  "Education in the COVID-19 era" in which YUM’s Executive Director, Vanessa Reksodipoetro, was one of the contributors. Read the article to find out the challenges that students are facing around the world and how we, as nonprofits on the ground, are helping students bridge the gaps.